CENTRO PRO UNIONE N. 75 - Spring 2009 ISSN: 1122-0384 semi-annual Bulletin In this issue: Letter from the Director..........................................................p. 2 The Nestorian Missions. The Spread of the Gospel in Asia from the V to the XV Centuries James Duncan .......................................................... p. 3 The Chinese Rites Controversy. A Clash of Culture James Duncan.......................................................... p. 13 A Bibliography of Interchurch and Interconfessional Theological Dialogues Twenty-fourth Supplement (2009).......................................... p. 25 Cumulative Index 55-74 (1999-2008).............................................. p. 42 Centro Pro Unione - Via S. Maria dell'Anima, 30 - 00186 Rome, Italy A Center conducted by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement www.prounione.urbe.it Director's Desk The Spring issue of the Bulletin offers our readers two conferences that look at the various models of mission that have existed since the beginning of the spread of the Gospel. In 2010 we will celebrate the 100 anniversary of the Missionary Conference held at Edinburgh in 1910. In many respects thisth conference introduced us to the beginnings of the modern ecumenical movement and the concern for the spread of the Gospel to all peoples. Just as then, so now the churches are confronted with the serious handicap that the disunity of Christians poses to the ministry of the Proclamation of the Good News to all peoples in all cultures. Two extraordinary conferences were given by the Jesuit, James Duncan. The first deals with an ancient model of mission used by the Ancient Church of the East, sometimes referred to as the Nestorian church. What is interesting for our reflection is the method that this church used in evangelizing China, the sub continent of India and the far reaches of the extreme Orient. The second lecture that Prof. Duncan offered dealt with the Chinese rites question and the controversy surrounding Matteo Ricci. The fact that the solution arrived at then, has not really helped us in the issues that the churches face today in the vast territories of the Orient and the spread of the Gospel in this area of the world. The issues raised are also relevant to doing mission in other parts of the world since there are not only theological questions posed but also the very delicate anthropological and cultural ones as well. In addition to these lectures we will publish in the next Bulletin the texts of Dr. Jane Williams entitled “Leading Women. Some Reflections on Women, Leadership and the Anglican Communion” and the text given at this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity celebration by Dom Mark Sheridan entitled “The Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches 2004-2008”. The Spring 2009 cycle of conferences includes the following: “Catholic-Lutheran Dialogues 1965-2005: An Extraordinary Historical Process with Significant Results and Still Remaining Challenges” by Dr. Günther Gassmann; “The Hebrew Bible, Human Rights and Interreligious Understanding” by Rabbi Jack Bemporad and “Dialogue and Proclamation. Reflection and Orientations on Inter-religious Dialogue and the Proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ” by James Duncan. In addition the Centro Pro Unione hosted the launch of the book edited by William Rusch entitled The Pontificate of Benedict XVI: Its Premises and Promises. Lastly, the latest up-date of the Bibliography of theological dialogues is printed in this issue of the Bulletin which concludes with a cumulative index of articles published from 1999-2008. Check our web site for up to date information on the Centro’s activities and realtime information on the theological dialogues. This Bulletin is indexed in the ATLA Religion Database, published by the American Theological Library Association, 250 S. Wacker Drive, 16 Floor, Chicago, IL 60606 (thhttp://www.atla.com). James F. Puglisi, sa DirectorN. 75 / Spring 2009Bulletin / Centro Pro Unione 3 Centro Conferences CCCC The Nestorian Missions The Spread of the Gospel in Asia from the V to the XV Centuries James Duncan, SJ Professor Emeritus of Theology and History of Religions at the Chinese University (Hong Kong), College of St. Thomas (Moscow) and the Theological Academy (L’vov, Ukraine) (Conference given at the Centro Pro Unione, Thursday, 6 November 2008) The Assyrian Missions 1 The Assyrian Church, or the Church of the East, as it is usually referred to by its members, is often called the Nestorian Church by those who do not belong to it, but, in fact, Nestorius, who was the Archbishop of Constantinople for a short time in the middle of the V century, had nothing to do with its establishment as an independent body and was never a member of it. A Church struggling for survival today, it has the distinc- tion of being one of the most successful missionary churches in history. The Assyrian Patriarchate guided and directed this extraordinary effort for over nine centuries, which saw the Church spread from the Red Sea to the Pacific Ocean and from Siberia to Indonesia. It never used force or constraint to propagate itself. It simply moved along the trade routes, over land and sea, from the Middle East to East Asia, serving small Assyr- ian communities established by traders at various point along the way, and when it moved into new territory, its policy was to establish a monastery and open a school and a dispensary to serve the local population, thus contributing to the cultural and economic advancement of the whole area as well as serving the health care needs of the people. The Independence of the Assyrian Church It is a common misconception that the Assyrian Church was excommunicated for heresy and thus severed from the rest of the Church at the Council of Ephesus, the third Ecumenical Council, in 431 AD. This is completely false. It was for purely political, not theological, reasons that the Assyrian Church voluntarily severed its ties with the See of Antioch, the third of the original three Patriarchates, Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, the very city where Jesus’ followers were first called ‘Christians.’ The separation was decided as a means of defense. We commonly think of the Church spreading through- out the Roman Empire, giving rise to two forms of Church life, the Roman and the Greek. What is lacking in this picture is the extraordinary spread of the Gospel outside the Roman Empire, beyond its eastern border, an evangelisation effort directed by the See of Antioch. Antioch was a multi-lingual city. Latin was the language of the bureaucracy, Greek the language of culture, Syriac, or Aramaic, was the language of commerce. The communities of the Faithful were generally formed according to the language their language preference, either Greek or Syriac, In the cities one found both types of communities, but in the rural areas the commu- nities were generally Syriac speaking, and, as one 1 The information presented in this article was taken from the following sources: A. ATIYA, A History of Eastern Christianity (London: Methuen & Co Ltd., 1968); C. BAUMER, The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity (London,/New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006); J.C. ENGLAND, “The Earliest Christian Communities in South East and North East Asia,” East Asian Pastoral Revue, 1988/2; D. HICKLEY, The First Christians in China: An Outline History and Some Considerations concerning the Nestorians in China during the Tang Dynasty (London: China Study Project, 1980); J.N.D. KELLY, Early Christian Doctrines (New York /Hagerstown San Francisco /London: Harper & Row Publishers, 1978). Material in the public domain from various internet sources.4 Bulletin / Centro Pro UnioneN. 75 / Spring 2009 moved further East, Greek speaking communities became a rarity and finally disappeared altogether. The Church had moved rapidly beyond the eastern borders of the Roman Empire. By the II c. at the latest, there were Christian communities solidly established on the south western shore of the southern tip of India, in what is today the State of Kerala. These communities used Syriac in their Liturgy for many centuries until it was finally replaced by the local language, Malayalam, and even today clerical studies there include Syriac in their curricula. It is not at all strange that the Gospel should have arrived so far so quickly. We know that the Apostles and the first missionaries directed themselves first of all to the Jewish communities of the Diaspora, and there were Jewish communities established in the region already in the III c. BC. There was a simple reason for this. The conquest of Israel by the Babylo- nians in 486 BC created waves of emigrants fleeing the conquering army, as the Babylonians were to carry off into exile in Babylonia much of the upper and middle classes of the population. Many felt that if they were to submit to exile, it would be in a place of their own choosing. Some fled south into Arabia and on into Ethiopia, and this gave origin to the Falashas, the Jews of Ethiopia who have created serious problems of integration in the State of Israel because their form of Judaism has little evolved beyond what it was at the time they left the Promised Land, and the later Rabbini- cal Judaism is totally foreign to them. In their flight from the forces of Babylonia, others simply followed the sea trade route to the East, which passed the southern coast of India and lead on to China. Landing on the south western coast of India, many decided to stay and built there new lives for themselves and their children. They were to remain an important presence and economic force in India for centuries, well into the XX c. In fact, shortly after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, an entire village in Kerala, composed only of Jews, emigrated to Israel, thus reversing a movement that had taken place some twenty-four centuries earlier. Syriac Christians moved along the land trade routes as well, and, as we shall see, by the V c. they had already established communities in what is now Afghan- istan, and even further east in Central Asia. These Christians, who lived to the east of the Roman Empire, were citizens of the Persian Empire, and as such they had to face two serious problems. First, the religion of the Persian Empire was Zoroastrianism, for which Christianity was a serious competitor, so Christians therefore had to deal with not only the enmity of the majority of the populace, but also with varying degrees and intensity of persecution as non-conformists, that is to say as non-Zoroastrians. Secondly, the Persian and Roman Empires were constantly waging war on each other, and as Christians, the Assyrians professed a major religion of the Roman Empire, which in itself made them suspect, identified them so to speak with the enemy. Matters became significantly worse when, on 27 February, 380, by a decree of the Roman Emperor, Theodosius I, Christianity was elevated to the status of the official state religion of the Empire. Thus, with a stroke of the pen, Christians in the Persian Empire were now looked upon as subversive agents of a foreign power against which the Persian government was frequently engaged in military campaigns. Christians thus became practically enemies of the state. Suspicion and surveillance, often combined with persecution, made life difficult and hazardous. Throughout the III and IV c., in the Sassanian Empire persecution of Christians was a common occurrence, and at times it was particularly intense. Ten of thousands of Christians paid for their Faith with their lives, and the Acts of the Persian Martyrs makes it plain that many even actively sought martyrdom as the best means of imitating Jesus and offering their lives in sacrifice as He had done. It is also clear that the inten- tion of the executioners was not simply to dispatch the victims to the other world, but to prolong their suffering by making their deaths as slow and as painful as possi- ble. But because of a number of factors, towards the end of the IV c. the persecutions tended to taper off and at times cease entirely. But one could never know when they might start up again at the whim of the authorities. It is in the light of this burdensome and dangerous situation that the following events are to be seen. In the year 424 AD, Dadisho, the Metropolitan of Ctesiphon, presided over a synod that would change forever the history of the Church of the East. The bishops decided to sever their ties with the Patriarchate of Antioch, from which they had depended and to which they had looked since the very beginning, and to run their own affairs. They thus effectively declared their independence not only from the See of Antioch, but, far more importantly, from the Roman Empire. This decision brought them two advantages. First, they no longer had to obtain the approval of Antioch for the decisions they took, which greatly expedited the gover- nance of the Church in the whole area east of the Euphrates. Secondly, they could no longer be looked upon as agents of the Roman Empire, an accusation that had often been used against them in the past. Now finally free of the tutelage of Antioch, they would deploy their remarkable evangelizing talent to the lands of the East, right up to the Pacific Ocean.N. 75 / Spring 2009Bulletin / Centro Pro Unione 5 The Theology of the Church of the East One final point needs to be clarified before we turn to the missionary efforts of this remarkable Church. Already independent for seven years before the Council of Ephesus in 431, it sent no representatives to that council, held inside the Roman Empire. Nestorius, a theologian of the Antiochean school was condemned by the council for heresy because he preferred the title ON4FJ@J`6@H, Mother of Christ, to 1,@J`6@H, Mother of God. As the newly appointed Archbishop of the Byzantine capital, he was intent on eradicating heresy from Constantinople. In so doing, he wished only to stress the duality of nature in the one person Jesus Christ, fully God and yet fully, completely human as well. His condemnation was the result of powerful manipulation of the royal court and certain council fathers by Cyril of Alexandria, who stoutly defended the point of view of the Alexandrian school, which empha- sized the unity of person in Christ rather than the duality of nature. In 486, the Church of the East officially accepted the theology of Nestorius as their own, by which they simply confirmed their own Christological tradition of Antioch, the most well known representa- tives of which, besides Nestorius, are Theodore of Mopsuestia, probably one of Nestorius’ own teachers, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa. We cannot concern ourselves here with the niceties of the positions which distinguish these two schools in demonstrating the orthodoxy of Nestorius, who was unjustly con- demned as a heretic at Ephesus. Suffice it to note, that in Rome on 11.XI.1994, there took place an official meeting at the highest level of the Church of Rome, in the person of Pope John-Paul II, and the Church of the East, represented by its Patriarch/Catholicos, Mar Denha IV. That August encounter produced a solemn official declaration, confirming the identity of the Faith of the two Churches. In other words, in the authorita- tive opinion of the Roman Church, the Church of the East is not heretical and is thus an integral part of the one Church of Christ. And this confirms the orthodoxy and the rehabilitation of the much – and unjustly – maligned Nestorius, whose theology has been that of the Church of the East for over fifteen centuries. The Development and the Expansion of the Church of the East A RABIA We know that in 225 AD there was already a bishop in Qatar. After the independence of the Church of the East, in 424, it was able to organize its apostolate there more efficiently. At the beginning of the V c., there were already six bishops in the peninsula, and in the VI c., the Christian King of Yemen constructed a cathedral church in the capital, Sana’a, for the bishop of the city. A synod was held in the peninsula in 676 AD, during the reign of the Catholicos Georgius, 660-680 AD, but after that we hear of no more there. In 779 and 823 AD there are still traces of Christian Bedouins, but their life was difficult before the advancing wave of Islam. We recall that at the death of Muhammad in 632 AD, Islam was already solidly entrenched in the central part of the peninsula, and he is supposed to have said that in Arabia, there should be no religion other than Islam. His followers saw to it that his wish was carried out, and by the end of the IX c., Christianity had disappeared from the region. I N THE M ESOPOTAMIAN H EARTLAND In the Empire itself, which in the V c. included all of what is now Iraq as well the north eastern part of today’s Syria, the Church of the East was well organ- ised. As of 410 AD, there were six metropolitan Sees: Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Patriarchal See, Beit Lapat (Gondeshapur), Nisibis, Prat de Maishan (Basra), Arbela, and Karka of Beit Selok (Kirkuk). Each of these metropolitan Sees was responsible for from six to twelve separate dioceses, so by the beginning of the V c., the Church had already attained significant develop- ment. Even if we take the low figure for the number of dioceses in a Metropolitan See, it would have had at least 36 dioceses when it declared itself independent of the “Western Fathers,” i.e. the See of Antioch, as well as the clergy necessary to staff the parishes of each diocese. Prior to the independence of the Church in Persia, there existed two important centres of theological study, Nisibis, today Nusaybin in southern Turkey, and, further to the west, Edessa, today Urfa, also in Turkey. When, in 363 AD, the Persians gained control of Nisibis, the school was transferred to Edessa, where it was know as the school of the Persians and, under the leadership of Ephrem the Syrian, soon became well- known far and wide. With the independence of the Church of the East, however, and in particular after the condemnation of Antiochian theology at the Council of Chalcedon, the Assyrian theologians returned to Nisibis, where the school, organised along monastic lines, continued to prosper and to provide the Church with the clergy and the monks it needed to serve it at home and to animate the missionary effort that carried the Gospel eastward to the Pacific Ocean. S OCOTRA6 Bulletin / Centro Pro UnioneN. 75 / Spring 2009 We are fortunate in that not only were Assyrian merchants great voyagers, but so were the monks. Most of them, of course, followed the land trade routes and served the communities that were scattered the length of them. Some, however, took to the sea, and it is to one of them that we owe precious information regarding the Church not only in Socotra, but also in lands farther to the east such as Sri Lanka. This famous traveller is known to history as Cosmos Indicopleustes, which simply means Cosmos, who sailed to the Indies. He made a long voyage lasting five years, from 520 to 525 AD, and it is he who, coming ashore on this island some 350 km. due south of Yemen and about 200 km. due east of the Horn of Africa, provided us with our first information regarding the existence of Assyrian communities on that island. Further, patriarchal records speak of the consecration of a bishop for Socotra by the Catholicos Enos, or Annush, 873-884 AD, in 877 AD, and again in 1057 AD by the Catholicos Sabar Ishu, or Soreshu, III, who reigned from 1057 till 1072 AD. Finally, we have the report of the presence of Kyriakos, Bishop of Socotra, at the election and conse- cration in 1281 AD of the Turkish-Mongol Catholicos Yahballaha, or Yoalaha, III, 1281-1317 AD. Thus we have firm evidence of the presence of Assyrian commu- nities in Socotra from the beginning of the VI to the end of the XIII c. These communities were obviously there for some time before the traveller Cosmas found them, and they no doubt remained there well after the return of Mar Kyriakos after the consecration of Yahballaha III. C ENTRAL A SIA The Church of the East had early carried the Gospel to Central Asia. The Synod of Marktabt in 424, indeed, was attended by bishops from as far away as Merv, in today’s Turkmenistan, and Herat, located in western Afghanistan, which means that the Church had already established itself in the area in the IV c. at the latest. Both cities quickly became metropolitan sees, and Merv, in fact, was right on the famed Silk Road itself, that vital lifeline of commerce that linked the lands of the Mediterranean, passing through Central Asia, with China in the Far East. And it was precisely this highway of commerce that was travelled by countless Christian merchants who carried not only their merchandise but also their Faith to Central Asia, China, and even, as we shall see, to Japan. At the same time, monastic life flourished in the Church of the East, and it was, in fact, largely monk-priests that travelled the Silk Road east- ward to carry the Gospel to the lands of Central Asia, China and the surrounding countries. Whole groups of monks were sent off, often accompanied as well by lay persons, to establish in the settlements along the route to the East communities which, in addition to a church, offered as well a school and a dispensary for the needs of the local people, and the establishment of these monastic communities attracted and favoured the settlement of varied civil populations consisting of merchants, artisans, farmers, teachers, doctors, etc. These settlements, in turn, served as bases for bringing the Gospel further into the surrounding regions. Thus, the missionaries brought the Gospel not only to the Assyrians living in the various settlements, but by their good works they revealed it in a practical way by serving all, Christian and non-Christian alike, thereby contributing to raise and enhance the quality of life of the surrounding populations. To give a few examples of this extraordinary effort, towards the end of the V c. an Assyrian delegation, consisting of a bishop, four priests, and two laymen set off for Turkestan where they subsequently worked with considerable success among the local population. In 781 AD, a king of the Turkish tribes requested that the Catholicos Timothy, 778-520, send him a bishop since he and all his subjects had become Christians. In response, the Catholicos sent a group of 80 monks and named a metropolitan for Samarkand as well as bishops for Bukhara and Tashkent. It is interesting and instruc- tive to note that the Assyrians understood well the value of the implantation of monastic life for the success of their missions. Further east, in the region of Lake Baikal in Siberia, there were numerous conversions in the X- XI c. among the Turkic tribes of the area, Tartars, Keraits, Uighurs (today almost entirely Moslem), Naimars, and Merkites. For example, in 1077, Abdishô, the Metropolitan of Merv, informed the Catholicos in Seleucia, that the king of the Keraits, together with 200,000 subjects, had accepted Christianity. Again, the famous Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, 1254-1324, found an Assyrian Christian community in Karakorum, where they had settled and built a church. Further, archaeological excavations in southern Siberia have found Christians cemeteries of the late Middle Ages, with tombstones bearing Syriac inscriptions and dating from 1249 to 1345. These inscriptions reveal a commu- nity of astounding ethnic diversity, Chinese, Uighurs, Mongols, Kashgars, Persians, etc., all united in one community of Faith that testifies both to the universality of the Christian message and the open spirit of the Assyrian Church. In the XIII and XIV c., however, two events would destroy this harmony. First arrived in the area Latin missionaries, mainly Dominicans and Franciscans, whoN. 75 / Spring 2009Bulletin / Centro Pro Unione 7 immediately began to create difficulties for the Assyrian Christians, whom they found almost everywhere they went, for they considered them to be heretics, that is, traitors to the true Faith, mainly because their customs and liturgy were so different from those of the Roman Church. The final blow, however, came with the brutal, indeed murderous, military campaigns of the fanatic Timur Leng, that is, Timur the Lame, know as Tamerla- ne in the West, 1336-1405, who, while professing to be a Moslem nevertheless massacred Moslem and Christian alike, all he found on his bloody way of destruction, sparing only those whom he considered useful for his purpose of rebuilding the Mongol Empire, usually artisans and artists, whom he carried back as slaves to Samarkand. While considered to be a patron of the arts, for instance, he commissioned buildings in Samarkand which still stand today, his demonic brutality, warped sense of pride, e.g. he commanded pyramids to be constructed by piling together the heads of those whom he and his soldiers had killed, and destructive frenzy destroyed the Assyrian communities of Central Asia and so put an end to a magnificent success story of carry- ing the Gospel to all peoples. History, indeed, repeats itself. It was also Islam that put an end to the flourish- ing Christian communities of North Africa, of which St. Augustine was the greatest representative. C HINA The first official mission of the Church of the East to China took place during the Patriarchate of Yeshuyab II, 628-643 AD, when in 635 AD a delegation headed by the monk-bishop A Lo Pen (Abraham) was received by the Emperor TaiTsung in the ancient capital Chang-an, today’s Xi-an. The importance that the Emperor at- tached to this mission is evident from the fact that he sent an imperial palace officer to meet the delegation at the western frontier of the empire and escort its mem- bers safely to the capital, Chang’an, one of the four ancient capitals of the Chinese Empire, today’s Xi-an. From this historic event, it is obvious that there had been an Assyrian presence in China already in the latter part of the VI c., at the latest. For it would have taken some time for the first Assyrian merchants on the scene to establish themselves, found a community and de- velop, receive reinforcements from the homeland, including clergy to serve the faithful, and thus become a presence important enough to attract the attention and the interest of the authorities, who would then report to the Emperor. The Emperor, in fact, was interested enough to request that a delegation be sent to him which would bring him the Christian Scriptures and service books, that he might have them examined to determine the exact nature of this religion. The members of the delegation were treated with all due respect, and the Emperor commanded the Scrip- tures to be translated into Chinese that he might from them form an opinion regarding the merits of this doctrine. He was pleased by what he discovered, so much so indeed that he issued an imperial edict allowing the predication of the “Resplendent Religion” throughout the empire, and in 638 AD, three years after the arrival of the delegation, he commanded the construction at imperial expense of a monastery in the capital for Bishop A Lo Pen and twenty monks. The mother Church continued to send monks and priests to serve the expanding Assyrian community in China, which, in 781, erected in Shanxi province, in the north of China to the west of Beijing, a large and elegant stone monument, over 2 m. in height, on which was engraved an explanation of the Christian Faith in Chi- nese, employing to that end a terminology that had meaning for and was understandable by the Chinese themselves. Reading this text, it is indeed interesting to see how the Assyrians instinctively adapted their discourse to the mentality and conceptual world of their intended audience, something that later missionaries of the Gospel were either unable or unwilling to do. And while the Latin missionaries of the XVIII and XIX c. built gothic style churches in China, and the Russian missionaries built their churches in the traditional Russian style, the remnants of the Assyrian presence in China, uncovered by various western as well as Chinese archaeological expeditions, are in the traditional Chinese style of the epoch. For instance, the bell tower of one of the ancient monasteries is a typical Chinese pagoda. At the foot of this great stone monument, one finds chiselled into the stone in the Syriac script 128 names of leaders of the Assyrian community, mostly priests and monks, along with a Metropolitan Bishop, Adam. With time and neglect, the monument fell, or was toppled, on its side and was eventually covered over by earth and vegetation. It was discovered in 1625, over eight centuries after its erection, by peasants working in the field. Notice of the find was brought to the resi- dence of the Jesuits in Beijing, who immediately under- took to examine the monument, preserve it, and trans- late its text, which bears eloquent witness to the spread of Christianity in ancient China and to the good sense of the leaders of that Christian community which instinc- tively applied principles in the explanation and preaching of their Faith that will only be recognised by the Roman Church in the second half of the XX c. and given a specific name: inculturation. The success of their8 Bulletin / Centro Pro UnioneN. 75 / Spring 2009 enterprise was significant. At the end of the X c., Assyrian communities, with their churches and monas- teries, were established in ten of the sixteen provinces of the land. In 845 AD the Emperor Wu Tsung began a severe persecution of the “foreign religions” in China, Bud- dhism and Christianity. Of course, given their greater number, the Buddhists suffered proportionately greater. One speaks of 40,000 Buddhist monks and nuns turned out of their monasteries and constrained either to marry, that is, to follow the Chinese way, or to emigrate, not an easy choice for the average monk or nun, ill equip- ped to confront the multiple difficulties of life in emigra- tion. The Assyrians suffered a similar fate, most of their churches and monasteries being destroyed. Some fled the country, while many simply went underground and waited for the tempest to pass, a common tactic in time of persecution. Thus, the “Resplendent Religion” approved by the imperial government two centuries earlier, found itself seriously diminished, but it did not disappear. In 942 AD, a certain Abu Dulaf, of Bukhara in Central Asia, travelled in China and reported finding Assyrian Christians and churches in various cities of the country. In 1093 AD the Catholicos Sabaryeshu III appointed a bishop, George, to Sestan in China, and subsequently transferred him to the north of the coun- try. In 1266 AD, it was recorded that a certain Yoha- nan, Bishop of Hami, an ancient city in the north western Chinese province of Xinkiang which still exists today with a population of some 500,000, was present in Seleucia at the consecration of the Catholicos Denha I, who governed the Church from 1266 to 1281. In 1278 AD we have a report of three churches in Yangz- hou, in the costal province of Jiangsu, to the north of Shanghai. And finally, it is recorded that a certain “Mar Sergius,” most certainly an Assyrian, the governor of this same province of Jiangsu from 1278-1280, was elevated to membership in the imperial household of Kublai Khan, the first Mongol Emperor of China and the founder of the Yuan dynasty. From 1279 till 1368 AD the Mongols held power in China, and, as they were favourably disposed toward Christians, the Assyrian Church flourished there once again. “Mar Sergius,” whom we just mentioned, had seven monasteries constructed in his province, and it goes without saying that he certainly would not have done so had there not been a need for them, and this need speaks eloquently of the quality of the religious life of the community that would inspire so many to conse- crate themselves to God in the monastic life. Some of the Mongol Khans took Christian wives, and so their sons had Christian mothers. Indeed, the mother of Kublai and his brother, Hulagu, who conquered Persia in 1258 AD, was herself a Christian, and Hulagu had a Christian wife. Thus, under Mongol rule, the Christians in Persia enjoyed a time of peace and prosperity, which was a definite improvement over life under Moslem rule. In the Yuan dynasty, founded by the Mongols, the capital, Khanbaliq, today’s Beijing, was a metropolitan see. Monastic life, as everywhere with the Assyrians, was in honour there as well. One of the monks was a certain Rabban Bar Saumâ, an Uighur, born about 1225 AD, who, at the age of 24 received the monastic tonsure from the Metropolitan himself, Mar Giwargis, and, after first living for seven years as a hermit, then went to live at the Monastery of the Holy Cross, some 70 km. SW of Beijing. A few years later, a young man named Markos, an Öngüt, the son of an archdeacon, while still in his teens presented himself to Bar Saumâ asking to become his disciple. Bar Saum accepted the young man, who was professed as a full-fledged monk in 1263 by the Metropolitan himself. Somewhere around 1275, these two, master and disciple, decided to under- take a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They got as far as Maragha, a city in what is today NW Iran, built by Hulagu Khan to be the capital of the Il-Khanate, that is to say the Mongol Empire in Central Asia, but because of the dangerous and unsettled situation farther to the West and the South, they could not continue on to the Holy Land. It was there that Mar Dinha I, the Assyrian Catholicos, had taken up residence. He advised them that it was not the moment to attempt visiting the Holy Land. In fact, the Catholicos had other plans for them. He proposed to make Markos the metropolitan for the Öngüt region of northern China, just north of the Great Wall, and Rabban Bar Saumâ his Vicar General, and to send them back to China. As they could not return home immediately because of various wars and armed conflicts going on in Central Asia at the time, they took up residence in a monastery near Mosul. Shortly thereafter, however, Mar Dinha died, and the synod held to elect his successor chose the young Markos to be the new Catholicos. There is no doubt that the young man had all the necessary qualities to recommend him for this high position, but of equal importance was the fact of his origins. He was a Turkic Mongol, and the rulers of the land at the time were precisely Mongols, both in Central Asia and in China. Even in those far off times, it seems, it did no harm to be politically correct. He chose the name Yahballaha III, and guided the Church wisely and skilfully for 37 years, from 1280 to 1317. He was an excellent Catholicos, but he had toN. 75 / Spring 2009Bulletin / Centro Pro Unione 9 guide the Church in a time of political upheaval and uncertainty, and he was twice imprisoned and saved from death in both instances only through the interven- tion in his favour of persons highly placed and able to influence the Il-Khan. During his reign, there were no less than seven Grand Khans in power, and it is re- ported that he even baptised one or the other of them. His reign was one of the most fruitful and successful in the history of the Church. In 1287, at the request of the reigning Il-Khan, Ar- ghun, for a suitable ambassador for Europe, Yahballaha III recommended his monastic mentor, Rabban Bar Saumâ, who was then sent on a diplomatic mission to the West. The Khan wished to form an alliance with the Christian powers of Europe against the Mamelukes in Egypt, who had overthrown the Ayyubids and were seeking to expand their power northward and eastward. As an incentive to such an alliance, the Khan offered his conversion to Christianity. Bar Saumâ approached the Byzantine Emperor, Andronikos II in Constantinople, Pope Honorius IV in Rome, the French King, Philip IV, and the English King, Edward I, whom he found in Gascony in the SW of France at the time. Interestingly, while there he celebrated the Divine Liturgy for Edward and gave him Communion. In Rome, he attended all the services of Holy Week in St. Peter’s, on Palm Sunday received Holy Communion from the hand of the Pope himself, and at the request of the Pope, celebrated Divine Liturgy in his presence. It would seem that at the time, the anathemas cast against Nestorius in 451 AD and those cast against the Antiochean theologians Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa, at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 AD, were no longer in honor in the West, even at the highest levels. His mission, however, was not crowned with success. Europe’s leaders, whose forces were ex- hausted from nearly two centuries of Crusades, could not be won over for another alliance to travel again to the Near East to do battle against the formidable Mamelukes, even if the alliance partners were to be the powerful and mighty Mongols. So Arghun remained a Moslem, and Bar Saumâ returned home to live in Baghdad until his death in 1294 AD. In the XIII c., two Italians, the Franciscan Giovanni di Monte Corvino and the explorer/adventurer Marco Polo reported contacts with Assyrian Christians in China, and there is mention of three Assyrian churches in the port city of Yangzhou in the eastern province of Jiangsu. But these reports are not particularly remark- able since they all concern the period of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, which was well-disposed toward Chris- tianity. Unfortunately, however, the XIV also saw the arrival in China of Latin missionaries, mostly Francis- cans and Dominicans, whose attitude toward, criticism of, and disputes with the Assyrians for their liturgical usages, quite different from those of the Latins, and for their Christological beliefs, considered by the Latins to be heretical, was detrimental not only to the Assyrian Church but to the reputation of Christianity in general, revealing discord and acrimony rather than the charity and goodwill proclaimed in the Gospel. In any case, the end was not far off. In 1368 AD the Mongols would lose power, and their Yuan Dynasty would be replaced by the Chinese Ming Dynasty, founded by the Hans, the largest ethnic group in China, whose power would last until 1644. The disappearance of the Assyrian Church in China was due, however, perhaps less to the new rulers – they had, in fact welcomed the first Jesuit missionaries to China – than to the destruction of the Church in Central Asia, where it was debilitated to the point of extinction by the barbaric and murderous policies of Timur Leng. With the new situation in Central Asia, communication between the mother Church in Mesopotamia and the Church in China was made difficult in the extreme, and the expedition of reinforcements was now practically out of the question. Whatever may be the multiple and complex causes of the decline, by the end of the XIV c. the Assyrian Church in China became extinct for all practical pur- poses. It was a sad and, indeed, ignominious end to a magnificent effort of Evangelization that had born much fruit and endured for nine centuries. It was unique in the history of the Church not only in its scope and its successes, but also by the fact that the messengers of the Gospel at no time arrived on the coattails of con- quering armies, such as had often been the case in other areas of the world, and, indeed, in China itself in the XVIII and XIX c., when the activities of the missionar- ies were facilitated and protected by the foreign powers that had divided the country up amongst themselves. Nevertheless, the Assyrian missions to Central Asia and China are and will remain an excellent example of how the Church should conduct its efforts at evangelization, with openness and profound and genuine respect for the culture of the people to whom it is carrying the Gospel, using as far as possible both the vocabulary and way of thinking of the host people to reveal to them the message of Christ, which, by its very nature, is universal and not tied to any particular culture. Notwithstanding the fact that it first appeared among us in the cultural world of the Jews, it rapidly expanded beyond that world to reach out to all of humanity.Next >